Michael Gove has hit a new low in the political discourse by quoting a Stormzy lyric in a Twitter beef with the Labour MP Angela Rayner. After Stormzy endorsed Jeremy Corbyn and laid into Boris Johnson, Gove dismissed him “as a far, far better rapper than he is a political analyst”. Rayner tweeted that “Gove is crap at both”, which prompted Gove to cram his entire foot into his mouth with the comeback: “I set trends dem man copy.”
The Twitter reaction was swift and unforgiving, not least because it is never ends well when a politician tries so painfully to be “down with the kids”. But, aside from the usual uncle-dancing-at-wedding cringing about it, one Twitter user, @bugsbunny, got to the heart of the matter with a reply to Gove that read: “Congrats, you’ve found the Twitter equivalent of blackface.”
Gove’s dismissal of Stormzy as a rapper rather than analyst highlights the sneering elitist bigotry behind the tweet. It appears beyond his comprehension that Stormzy could possibly be intelligent, political
and rap. Never mind that the roots of rap music lie in hip-hop which was, at first, as much social commentary as entertainment. Stormzy has been a critic of Tory policy, particularly around Grenfell; he has created a scholarship for young people to go to Cambridge; he has launched the #Merky Books imprint to showcase a “new generation” of voices. Stormzy is a far better source for political analysis than Gove, who is so distant from the daily realities of regular people he could not possibly understand them.
For Gove, Stormzy’s rap lyrics have no merit other than to be appropriated. No doubt he revelled in being able to use “dem”, at once showing off his “street” credentials, while also highlighting his linguistic superiority. He probably aimed to mock the supposedly out-of-his-depth rapper; to show him the error of his ways for daring to call out the politician. The tweet was particularly insensitive given Johnson’s history of calling “dem man” “piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”. Next time, Gove should take the advice from the title of the song he’s quoting and “shut up”. Let’s hope, for all our sakes, this is not a trend that his fellow politicians want to follow.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/shortcuts/2019/nov/26/twitter-blackface-why-michael-goves-stormzy-comments-are-so-egregiousThere's so much focus on Johnson's flamboyant utterances on race that Gove's revolting attitudes are most often overshadowed.
Sayeeda Warsi in an interview with the
Guardian criticized Gove, among comments that cut Johnson some slack on racism (seemingly because he's so chaotic, scattergun and glib that holding a coherent enough line to fully commit to anything as demanding as full-on Islamophobia is beyond him):
Warsi has also raised concerns about the views of senior government figures, warning earlier this year that she feared Michael Gove becoming prime minster because of his views on Muslims. Now she goes further, saying she has “no doubt” Gove – who wrote a controversial book in 2006 called
Celsius 7/7 about Islamism in the UK – is Islamophobic. “I think Michael’s view is there is no such thing as a non-problematic Muslim. I think that in his world there’s an extremist lurking behind anyone who professes to be connected to Islam or Muslims in any way shape or form,” she explains.
“On one occasion the prime minister, David [Cameron] pulled him up on it around the cabinet table for some comment that he made. He just turned around and went: ‘Enough, Michael.’ It was about Muslims.” A spokesman for Gove calls these claims “categorically untrue”.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/27/sayeeda-warsi-tory-islamophobia-muslim-prejudice-investigation
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